Cloudpunk Review

With the upcoming cyberpunk life simulation game Nivalis on the horizon, which I genuinely cannot wait to get my hands on, I was curious about what Ion Lands are capable of in terms of world building and storytelling. That impatience and curiosity led me to Cloudpunk, the earlier game from the same developers set in the city and universe that the new title is based on. Cloudpunk is a neon noir adventure game with voxel based visuals set in the rain soaked vertical metropolis of Nivalis. It blends driving, exploration, and narrative heavy conversations with a diverse cast of humans, androids, and AIs. Honestly, Cloudpunk turned out to be one of the best cyberpunk experiences I have ever had.

A Stranger In The Machine

You play as Rania, a newcomer to Nivalis and a freshly hired driver for Cloudpunk, a semi illegal underground delivery service. That perspective does a lot of heavy lifting. Like Rania, you are discovering the layout, the rules, and the pace of the city for the first time, which provides an extra layer of immersion. There is an immediate and constant sense of not belonging. You are a speck of irrelevancy dropped into a world that is already moving at full speed without you. You are not a chosen one or a rebel hero. You are just someone trying to survive long enough to escape your past inside a system that barely acknowledges your existence. That fractured sense of identity is cyberpunk at its most effective.

Corporate Power and Constant Surveillance

It does not take long for the power structure of Nivalis to reveal itself. Governments are irrelevant, and in their place stand megacorporations and the underground systems that orbit them. DebtCorp looms over Rania from the start, forcing her into illegal work just to keep her head above water. CorpSec is omnipresent with patrols and alerts triggered by sensitive online searches.

Even Cloudpunk monitors your actions and reminds you exactly how replaceable you are. Surveillance is not dramatic but mundane, routine, and unavoidable. Some of the most unsettling moments come from how casually this power is exercised. You might see a man brought back from the dead just to pay off his debts, or a woman cloned and quietly replaced because it was more convenient for business. None of this is framed as shocking within the world. It is just policy.

A City That Speaks Without Words

Nivalis is a physical manifestation of everything the game has to say. Its verticality tells a story. The higher you go, the cleaner and wealthier life becomes. The lower you descend, the more decay and desperation take over. Upper levels are filled with sleek architecture and fancy sushi vendors, while lower districts are grimy and polluted with street stalls selling roach meat kebabs. The city communicates power and inequality without needing to explain itself. It does not just look cyberpunk; it behaves like it.

A Noir Moral Landscape That Lingers

Cloudpunk rarely presents clear right or wrong choices. While your decisions do not radically alter the story, they carry immense emotional weight. You are sometimes asked to choose between the safe option and the human one. The game does not let you walk away guilt free. Characters call you back and consequences echo later.

There was one particular decision I made in the blink of an eye with no hesitation. I was even kind of proud of it until I got a certain call about it later, leaving me to exclaim out loud at my screen that the game was making me feel bad. Even when you believe you made the right call, there is a lingering bittersweet feeling in the air. You are not punished, but you are made to reflect. That doubt is pure noir.

Androids Souls and the Question of Humanity

No cyberpunk story is complete without asking what it means to be human. Cloudpunk leans heavily into the question of whether machines can love or deserve freedom. Ironically, it is often the human characters who feel the most hollow and lacking in empathy. The androids display loyalty and moral conviction. You meet an android private investigator trying to save a human child and an anarchist rapper protesting corporate control. The boundary between human and machine is not just blurred; it is unstable.

Why Cloudpunk Gets It Right

Cloudpunk does not rely on spectacle or power fantasy. It understands that the genre is about pressure, compromise, and living under oppressive systems you cannot dismantle. It is about feeling small and morally uncertain long after the screen fades to black. That is why it works. For me, Cloudpunk is not just sci fi with a neon filter slapped on top. It is cyberpunk through and through.